


this is how i see you

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [104]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky has lots of issues, C-PTSD, Christmas fic, Cognitive load is a bitch, Days Can Be Bad And Good, Disabled Character, M/M, Mentally Ill Character, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 11:12:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5537732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a minute of fighting against the <i>stupid</i> fucking impulse, drive, <i>fear</i> that makes him want to pull away, Bucky says, "Merry fucking Christmas," and maybe it could be a wry joke instead of bitter and spitting acid. Maybe. </p><p>Steve's arms tighten for a second and there's no joke in his voice when he says, "<i>Trust me</i>, I've had worse."</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is how i see you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celeloriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeloriel/gifts), [adsartha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adsartha/gifts).



> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it.
> 
> This is utterly Christmas not-quite-fluff. I also out of sheer stubborn insist on posting it on Christmas, of which there is still an hour and a half left where I am. I am also incredibly tired and wrote it in and around The Family Gathering, so I beg patience with any infelicities, which I will probably come back and fix sometime in the next little while. 
> 
> Also also, this is for adsartha and celeloriel, who really put up with an astonishing amount of wittering from me, about this verse.

That night goes for broke, with five fucking different nightmares in a little less than five fucking hours of sleep. Bucky's actually pretty sure that shouldn't be fucking possible given the physiology of sleep stages, but when the fuck has that ever mattered? It's not like his fucking body or brain care what's possible or not. 

The first two he manages to startle awake, grind his teeth, force himself to count all of the endless fucking sensory shit that tells him where he is and what's actually fucking happening, including the worried cat sniffing his face, and go back to sleep. 

The third time he has to get up and pull on sweats and a t-shirt. The fourth he startles hard enough that Steve half wakes up, but at least Steve's willing to hear _nothing, just a fucking nightmare_ and then to roll back and pull Bucky over to lie half across him, Steve working his arm under Bucky's torso and wrapping it around across his back to his waist. 

When he wakes up from the last one, Bucky's still where he fell asleep, and he can't get back to sleep but he refuses to fucking get up, or even move, because fuck everything. It's not the most juvenile thought he's had this week, but it's probably close, and he doesn't give a shit. 

The kitten jumps up on the bed, pads her way across the comforter over Steve's stomach and sniffs at Bucky's face. She makes her twittering kind of questioning noise and settles down with her paws under her. 

It's pretty much pure fucking stubborn (it's gotta be around six, which means even Steve's going to at least start waking up soon), but Bucky closes his eyes anyway, and ignores the second interrogation-by-meow, the paw against his forehead, and being licked on the eyebrow. 

She's just started to go for butting her head against Bucky's temple when Steve moves, a little. His left hand, resting on Bucky's right upper arm, moves a little; the kitten jumps a little in turn and makes a complaining noise. 

"You okay?" Steve asks, sleepy, and Bucky still refuses to open his eyes. 

"Fine," he replies, sourly. "Just give me a fucking saw and a scoop to carve out my fucking brain and everything'll be just fucking peaches." 

The stupid kitten stands up and goes for a longer complaint, closer to a yowl, and knocks her head against Bucky's a little harder. He squints at her and reluctantly pulls his arm out from under the comforter to cover her head with it. 

"Shut up, you pain in the ass," he tells her in Russian, which she completely ignores, ducking her head out from under his hand and yowling again, and then grooming furiously at her tail and the back of his hand. Then she starts shoving her face under his hand, like she hadn't just backed out from under it three seconds ago. "You're brain-damaged, you little twit," he adds, and Steve huffs a soft laugh. Bucky can feel Steve shift half-underneath him. 

"C'mon," Steve says, and stops to yawn. "You're not gonna go back to sleep enough to ignore her or fool her, might as well get up and feed her and shower and eat." 

 

It's Christmas, and he doesn't give a shit, and it's eating at him. It's a stupid fucking tangled up thought, because it doesn't even fucking make sense. Maybe he should give a shit, maybe he even wants to, but he doesn't, and what the fuck does it even matter? It's not like anyone's even fucking _asking him_ to. 

Fuck, someone should really just shoot him. 

He feeds the damn kitten while Steve's in the shower, and puts the coffee on; when the little twit is done, she grooms herself furiously for about five minutes and then jumps up on the counter to half-crawl up his arm and bump her head against his jaw, rub her jaw against the side of his neck. When he picks her up to let her settle against his collar-bone she purrs her bone-rattling purr for a while. 

"You're an idiot," he tells her, but he's mostly talking to himself. 

 

He scrubs himself clean in the tub, the kitten perching on the little mosaic-topped round table that lives beside it, fascinated by the process she could hear and smell but not see. 

Packages with new bottles of the stuff Romanova went to all those fucking lengths to get planted here showed up, these ones twice to three times as big. And she was right about them, which isn't exactly a fucking surprise. Knowing things about people, figuring them out, and then figuring out how to use those things to make those people happy - that's what they trained her for. It's what they made her for. From the ground up, first time over. Expecting her to stop it just because she's sincere is fucking stupid. So is blaming her for it. 

He doesn't, really. It's not about her. If it's about anything it's about how he shouldn't have to go through a whole _fucking_ song and dance of angry grudging resentment for something that should be just a fucking matter of going _here, try this_ and moving the fuck on. He knew how to do that, once. Or he remembers he did. So if you can trust that, he knew. 

This is not the fucking time he wants to start wondering about that. Again. 

It never fucking is. 

The part where she knows all of this, the part where she's trying to help, as much as she knows how, doesn't fucking help. Nothing does. 

(It's not that he's bored with all of the shit inside his head. He's been bored for a long fucking time. That's part of what makes him so fucking angry - it's the _same shit_ , over and over, and it never stays gone, it never stays fixed, and it never - )

He towels himself off, scrubs his hair dry and rakes it back with his fingers to tie it there. 

 

Steve's made a ludicrous effort at breakfast, some kind of fucking complicated omelette with bleu cheese and ham and a fucking half-decent human being - even _him_ , once upon a fucking time - would actually come up with something complementary to fucking say, even if he made a joke out of it. 

What he ends up saying is, "You know Wilson's got an unfair advantage, right?" because then maybe he can make this about the unofficial competition of cooking prowess, maybe he can make this not about . . . him. 

"He can go right ahead and have that unfair advantage," Steve replies, blithely, handing Bucky one of the plates. "I'm still better at omelettes." 

Steve sits at the counter-bar; Bucky stays in the kitchen, leaning on the counter and eating there, with the kitten pawing now and again at his elbow to get him to feed her bits of egg and ham. Then she crosses around behind him to crawl up his left arm to settle on his shoulder. 

"He's being dragged over to Jersey to meet Maria's family for Christmas Dinner, anyway," Steve adds, after they eat in quiet for a few minutes. 

Bucky pauses, trying to drag up anything he knows about Hill and Hill even _having_ a family, and then says, "Doesn't she come from something like three billion crazy Italians?" 

"Mmhm," Steve says, around a mouthful of omelette. He swallows and adds, "And she hasn't had a boyfriend for more than five years. And the one before that was apparently a jerk." 

"Poor bastard," Bucky says, and it's only a sliver away from being totally sincere. He has vague, vague memories of being dragged somewhere to an Italian Christmas Dinner, back in the day, and he's also pretty sure that relationship ended right then and there, because her female relatives were already picking out a fucking wedding dress. 

"And she only told them Sam exists a month and a half ago," Steve adds, and now Bucky can't help laughing, a little darkly. 

 

He physically stops Steve from trying to clean the kitchen and shoves him out to go fucking sit down. 

And speaking of things that "shouldn't", cleaning the fucking kitchen shouldn't have him having to stop three or four times to try to work to _remember_ where the fuck things go, somewhere he's lived for months, not because of any esoteric amnesic fuckery but just because his brain goes blank, like he's asking it to to fucking astrophysics. 

It only takes him a half a fucking hour, anyway. 

There's shit that lurks around in his head that he never means to say, stuff that he shouldn't say, shouldn't actually let that poison out where it can get at anyone but him. Pretty much every fucking poisonous thought he ever has, honestly. It doesn't help that he knows better. The part of them that knows better never gets to be in fucking charge. 

Or maybe it just gets tired of being in fucking charge and gives up for a few minutes. Whatever it is, when Steve gets up and comes back to the kitchen as Bucky's wiping the table, the stupid ruminating shit he's chewing over in his head manages to vomit up, the words, "You know, for what you put in you're getting a _shitty_ half-assed bargain version of your fucking friend." 

Then he forces his God-damned mouth to close, clenching his jaw. He scrubs at a spot on the counter a lot harder than it needs to, nowhere near as hard as he wants. He doesn't look up. Doesn't fucking - fuck, he can't even think of what kind of answer there _is_ for that. 

Forget what kind of answer it deserves. 

After a minute Steve says, "First off, you know damn well I actually get a lot more of you than I ever used to. Or you would if you stopped and thought about it." 

That . . . might be it. Close, anyway. It hits him in the gut, but like that's far away, through a door or on the other side of a screen. And he can tell Steve's waiting for him to look up, but he can't. Not right now. 

"You know," Steve goes on, after that moment passes, "the thing I took for granted most in my life, ever, was that whatever stupid thing I did, got myself into, you'd be there. Eventually. Like I never even questioned that, just tried to work out what I was gonna _do_ when you _got_ there, because it was probably gonna be embarrassing. My point being, it's not just you were hiding things, it's, I wasn't looking much, either." 

Now Bucky manages to make himself turn around, lean back against the counter instead of over it. He covers his face with both hands, then drops them, folds his arms and says, "Fuck, I don't know how to answer that, Steve." 

Steve's leaning on the doorway, his arms folded, and he shrugs. "Yeah, I wouldn't either. Just, Buck, I think about how much I used to . . . miss, not even know I was, and Jesus . . . " he trails off, and shrugs again. "And it's not the point." 

"What the fuck is the point, Steve?" Bucky asks. Almost doesn't, but asks. Knows there is one. And it's not - he doesn't think this is going to end the way Steve wants. Doesn't think it can. 

Wishes he'd managed to keep his fucking mouth shut. 

Steve's gaze drops, and for a second he looks like he's hesitating. Then he says, "A couple weeks after you came home, Natasha . . . came back to the US. She thought I was . . ." he shakes his head, takes a deep breath and looks up, towards where the wall hits the ceiling, settles on, "she thought I was thinking about things in dangerous ways. And that I'd ignore her if she just tried to tell me over the phone, or email, or whatever. And she was probably right.

"One of the things she went out of her way to say, out loud, was - " he stops, and starts again with, "she wanted to make sure I understood that back then you . . . didn't know how to be a person, that you were figuring it out." 

"Steve I still don't fucking know how to be a fucking person," Bucky says, quietly. Bitter and wry. He shouldn't; it's frankly fucking cruel. He shouldn't fucking say it and he does anyway, can't stop himself; and he should be fucking ashamed, and that he can manage. 

Steve looks down again, leaves that alone when he goes on, "She also warned me that whatever self you found might not be my friend. I told her that was impossible. That I knew exactly what she meant and it didn't fucking matter, you were my friend, you are my friend, everything else could change, but not that. Even if you never remembered anything, even if you decided you didn't want to, it wasn't worth it - people change, Buck. I changed - you didn't go anywhere." 

"That's not the same thing and you know it," Bucky says, quietly. 

"I dragged you all over fucking Europe while people shot at us, we ate even worse food than at home, we lived in holes in the fucking ground, and you never slept because of fucking nightmares," Steve counters, "I dunno Buck I think I can make some pretty compelling arguments for fucking parallels." 

"You didn't fucking drag me - " Bucky starts, feeling the acid twist up, but Steve interrupts him. 

"And you're not a fucking trial," he says, flat. "Or any fucking 'version' of anything. You're my best friend. Everything else is details." 

And this time Bucky manages to bite back the words, the words he doesn't want to say, that aren't even true except in the terrified fucking mewling bullshit corner of his mind, the part that wants to keep pushing and pushing and pushing until he _finds_ where Steve pushes back. Stops _being Steve_. 

It's not fucking fair, and he hates it. 

So he swallows the words that try to get out, try to demand _what if she'd fucking been right_ or _has it ever fucking crossed your mind that I never did, that I just fucking pretend this is what I am because it's better than the fucking alternative_ or - 

Anything. 

Bites his tongue and doesn't fucking say a word. 

"Bucky," Steve says, quiet again, "you are - " and he stops and tries again with, "you let me know you better now than you ever did before. And don't even try to say it's not 'let'," he adds. "Don't think I don't _know_ you could shut me out like a God-damn concrete wall if you wanted to. You're not a fucking 'version' of anything." 

The countertops are granite, now, but Bucky can still break them if he lets his left hand close too tightly on the edge, so on top of making himself not answer with any of the bullshit that comes to hand so easily, he makes himself not do that either. Eventually he manages to say, "I'm sorry," levelly, which is what he actually fucking _wants_ to say. 

"I know," Steve replies. "You're still sorry for a lot of things that aren't your fault." 

"Steve, me being an asshole," Bucky sighs, "is actually my fucking fault." 

"You being fucked up," Steve counters, "because of fucking decades of shit being carved into your head means it part of you rips you to fucking shreds because it doesn't know when I'm gonna fucking turn into some bastard piece of shit, actually isn't." 

Given the words, there's a tiny, bitter-acid part of Bucky that's amused at the curses, and the heat roped in under them. Out loud he says, "You shouldn't have to deal with that." 

Steve snorts. "Yeah, sure," he retorts, "and you shouldn't have to deal with _any_ of this shit, _ever_ , and whose fault is it either of us does? Because _my_ memory works just fine, Buck, and _I_ don't remember you volunteering. For any of it. Except maybe saving my stupid neck over and over again, and oddly enough that one doesn't get us to any place where I get to be a selfish _asshole_ about you being cranky on next to no sleep." 

When Bucky says, "Watch your fucking language," it's the closest he can get to not arguing, not trying to find some reason that's wrong, and it's not all that fucking close. 

"Is it gonna do a trick?" Steve asks, and Bucky chucks the wet cloth at his face. It's stupid, and it doesn't solve anything, but at least it lets him stop. He takes the cat off his shoulder and puts her on the counter

He goes to the bathroom sink and splashes cold water on his face; pulls the tie out of his hair and puts it back in; fucking makes the bed, because it's there and he can. Throws laundry in the machine. Takes the load out of the dryer and dumps it on the bed so he can fold it, dropping it in piles on the dresser. 

Steve comes in before he's done folding; he rests a hand on Bucky's shoulder, standing behind him, and when Bucky doesn't shake him off - doesn't want to shake him off - Steve pulls the pair of jeans out of Bucky's hand and throws it back on the bed, then wraps his arms around Bucky's shoulders. 

After a minute of fighting against the _stupid_ fucking impulse, drive, _fear_ that makes him want to pull away, Bucky says, "Merry fucking Christmas," and maybe it could be a wry joke instead of bitter and spitting acid. Maybe. 

Steve's arms tighten for a second and there's no joke in his voice when he says, " _Trust me_ , I've had worse." 

 

Steve manages a convincing argument for watching every fucking _Die Hard_ movie ever made with the ridiculous amounts of Christmas chocolate they've somehow ended up with in arm's reach, which right now amounts to suggesting it in a tone of voice that says he thinks it's a good idea. The fit of completely unnecessary domestic bullshit having been stopped, Bucky's not sure he could think his way out of a paper bag, or out of sitting somewhere and staring. 

Considering that, sprawling somewhere and staring at a moving screen's probably a better idea. And there's an argument to be made that it's kind of like a fucking Christmas thing. And he sure as shit can't handle going anywhere. So sprawling using Steve as a pillow and a heater when Steve thinks it's a good idea works fine. 

He loses track of the plot somewhere after deciding he can definitely see why McClane wife left him, and gives up and lets his eyes close. Steve's fingers move idly against his skull, through his hair, and he ignores the gunfire on the screen in favour of that. 

The kitten settles in a curl on his upper back. 

After a while Steve says, "For the record, one of these days I'm gonna make a power-point presentation demonstrating that you're secretly a cat. And always have been. It's gonna have illustrations." 

It takes a minute to actually line the thoughts up, but the thing is on consideration and with the damn kitten right there for comparison, Bucky can't actually find an argument that would sway a jury. 

So he settles on saying, "Shut up, Steve," and leaves it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] this is how i see you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6348490) by [echolalaphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/echolalaphile/pseuds/echolalaphile)




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